(AP) The world pumped about 564 million more tons of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. "It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."...11/3

(PR-Inside) Battelle and its world-renowned scientific staff, as well as the highly skilled employees at its affiliated national labs, have donated more than $4.7 million to charity this year, with more to come. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the United Way campaign netted $960,000 from the employees and lab. Additionally, more than $15,000 was raised for charities such as the Komen Race for the Cure and the Alzheimer's Walk....11/3

(PhysOrg) Heated to extreme temperatures of up to 150 million degrees Celsius, the plasma in ITER's giant experimental fusion reactor will be fed a fuel of frozen pellets of deuterium-tritium, fired into the tokamak vacuum vessel by pellet injectors. Testing of the most recent pellet injection design technology developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and US ITER is under way this fall at the DIII-D research tokamak in San Diego....11/3

(Oak Ridger) Four Oak Ridge High School students -- two teams -- have been named regional finalists in this year's Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. They are among 96 students from 21 states to receive the honor, according to the Siemens Foundation....11/3

DOE

(DOE Press Release) These awards recognize the achievements of DOE employees whose leadership and cost-reducing initiatives have saved taxpayer money by reducing the Department's use of energy, water, and paper, while improving the energy efficiency of Federal buildings and vehicles....11/3

East Tennessee

(Knoxville News Sentinel) The Alexander Inn in the Jackson Square area has been put on the market by the nonprofit that holds the property deed. The asking price is $495,000, said realtor Linda Brown....11/4

(Knoxville News Sentinel) The state of Tennessee has issued a new wastewater discharge permit for the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant that requires a series of actions to ensure progress in the cleanup of long-standing mercury pollution....11/3

energy & science policy

(AIP Bulletin) Almost 70 scientific societies and associations, universities, and organizations signed a letter authored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science urging a special congressional committee that is charged with developing a deficit reduction plan to avoid cutting R&D funding....11/3

(Christian Science Monitor) China, in particular, was fingered for massive ongoing cyberespionage against US companies in an alleged effort to gather the technological insights needed to make its economy more competitive....11/3

(Science Daily) An international team of astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics has used the brief but brilliant light of a distant gamma-ray burst as a probe to study the make-up of very distant galaxies....11/2

(Wired) NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has spotted one of the largest new sunspots to appear on the surface of the sun in years. It is nearly 25,000 miles wide, or more than three times larger than the Earth. The enormous sunspot was seen rotating over the sun's northeastern limb on Nov. 3....11/3

(Science Daily) Scientists within the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation....11/2

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